Most people bemoaned the ending of the NASA era of sending shuttles to the moon and space station. When many of us think of space, we generally think of governments or mega-corporations sending machines to explore distant planets, or satellites for spying or communication reasons.

Thanks to Rand Simberg's “Property Rights In Space” article, however, we might be changing the way we think about the final frontier. We can use it for human enterprise, like mining for minerals.

But before that can become a reality, we must first rework the Outer Space Treaty and establish property rights for those doing the work, which might be a whole lot trickier than the actual mining.

Property rights are integral to human flourishing, and space-property is another opportunity to allow humans to do what we do best, create. My only concern is to set the laws up so that the people who actually take the risks and do the work will benefit. This means to keep the governments and those who suffer from envy from overriding private property claims.

But property rights can be taken without regard to Constitutional law. Even in the Land of the Free, citizens have had portions of their property seized by the government.

People around the globe need to hash out this issue before we can benefit.